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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Positive emotion, negative emotion, and emotion control in the externalizing problems of school-aged children.

The present study examined the role of emotion and emotion control in children's externalizing problems. Third- to sixth-grade children were administered a self-report measure of positive emotion, negative emotion, and emotion control. Peer- and teacher-reported adjustment problems were assessed. Structural equations modeling revealed that negative emotion, especially anger, was important in externalizing problems. Less positive emotion was associated with more externalizing problems. However, when negative emotion was examined in a more differentiated manner (anger, sadness and fear), the effect of positive emotion was diminished. Anger consistently emerged as a significant predictor of behavior problems. No interaction between either positive emotion and emotion control or negative emotion and emotion control was significant. Results showed main effects of each emotion component, with small interaction effects. Methodological and conceptual implications of the findings from the present study are discussed.

Adolescent↗

Group-based parent-training programmes for improving emotional and behavioural adjustment in 0-3 year old children.

BACKGROUND: Mental health problems in children are common. Research suggests that parenting has an important role to play in helping children to become well adjusted adults, and that the first few months and years of a child's life are especially important in establishing patterns of emotional, cognitive and social functioning which will in turn influence the child's future development and in particular, their mental health. Parenting programmes may therefore have a role to play in improving the mental health of infants and toddlers. OBJECTIVES: The objectives of this review are as follows: a) To establish whether group-based parenting programmes are effective in improving the mental health of children less than three years of age b) To assess the role of parenting programmes in the primary prevention of mental health problems SEARCH STRATEGY: A range of biomedical and social science databases were searched including MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsychLIT, Sociofile, Social Science Citation Index, ASSIA, the Cochrane Library including SPECTR, CENTRAL, National Research Register (NRR) and ERIC. SELECTION CRITERIA: Only randomised controlled trials were included and studies had to include at least one standardised instrument measuring some aspect of infant mental health. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: The treatment effect for each outcome in each study was standardised by dividing the mean difference in post-intervention scores for the intervention and treatment group, by the pooled standard deviation, to obtain an effect size. The results for each outcome in each study have been presented with 95% confidence intervals. Where appropriate the results have been combined in a meta-analysis using a random effect model. MAIN RESULTS: A total of five studies were included in the review. The 5 included studies provided a total of 36 assessments of infant and toddler mental health including emotional and behavioural adjustment, and sleep patterns. All of the results apart from 6 showed positive findings favouring the intervention group. While some of findings were non-significant, most of the effect sizes were large and the wide confidence intervals crossing the zero that were obtained in a number of the studies, were very probably due to small sample sizes. There was sufficient data from four studies to combine the results in a meta-analysis. The results of the meta-analysis show a significant difference in children's emotional and behavioural adjustment favouring the intervention group. Overall, the limited follow-up data provide equivocal evidence concerning the maintenance of these effects over time. REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS: The results of this review suggest that parenting programmes can be effective in improving the mental health of infants and toddlers. There is, however, insufficient evidence to reach any firm conclusions regarding the role that such programmes might play in the primary prevention of mental health problems. Furthermore, there is insufficient evidence to know whether the short-term benefit of these programmes is maintained over time, and further research is required.

Child Development↗

The uncharted waters of emotion: ethnicity, trait emotion and emotion expression in older adults.

Emotions are central to contemporary theories of health, and a growing body of psychological research has shown emotion and emotion regulatory styles to be predictive of health outcomes. Yet despite these clear links and the fact that patterns of emotion and expression are partially a product of culture, there is a meager literature on the emotional characteristics of different ethnic groups. Even where ethnicity has been investigated in emotions research, it has typically been operationalized in such a way that within-group differences are obscured with most individuals assigned to broad ethnic categories, such as non-Hispanic White, or Black. In the present study we draw on data from a multi-ethnic sample of 755 community-dwelling older adults to parse a picture of the emotional characteristics of three of the largest and most culturally distinct ethnic groups in the Northeastern United States: African Americans, West Indians (Jamaicans), and Eastern Slavs (Russians and Ukrainians) from the former Soviet Republic, as well as a comparison group of US-born European Americans. As predicted, there were striking differences in nine of 10 trait emotions as well as in levels of emotion expressed during conflict. The findings are discussed in terms of emotion socialization and implications for prediction and intervention in psychosocial models of emotions, emotion regulation, and health in older ethnic populations.

Journal Article↗

Differences in emotional distress between breast tumor patients with emotional inhibition and those with emotional expression.

The differences in affective status between patients who restrain their negative emotion and those who express negative emotion after being given their breast cancer diagnosis were studied using the Profile of Mood States (POMS) at two sessions: (i) at the first visit to the outpatient surgery clinic, and (ii) immediately after being given the diagnosis of breast cancer. Eighty-seven patients completed the POMS and the Courtauld Emotional Control Scale (CECS) at the first visit to the outpatient surgery clinic at Shiga University of Medical Science Hospital. They also completed the POMS immediately after being given the diagnosis of breast cancer. Breast cancer patients who restrain their negative emotion (n = 8) were highly anxious, depressed and confused after being given the diagnosis compared to breast cancer patients who express negative emotion (n = 8). Emotional distress in benign breast tumor patients was reduced after being given the diagnosis regardless of the trend of emotional inhibition. That is, emotional distress in patients who restrain their emotions was considerably increased compared with that of patients who expressed their emotions when they were faced with a life-threatening disease. These results suggest that it may be therapeutic to advise breast cancer patients to express their negative emotion.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Basic emotions, relations among emotions, and emotion-cognition relations.

From the cognitive theory perspective that emotions are cognition dependent and contain cognitive components, Ortony and Turner (1990) questioned the validity of the concept of basic emotions. They argued that the so-called basic emotions were neither psychologically or biologically "primitive" nor "irreducible building blocks" for generating the "great variety of emotional experiences." In the biosocial theory tradition, researchers have identified multiple noncognitive activators of emotion and demonstrated the usefulness of defining the essential components of emotion as phenomena that do not require cognitive mediators or constituents. In this framework, emotions are seen as basic because their biological and social functions are essential in evolution and adaptation. Particular emotions are called basic because they are assumed to have innate neural substrates, innate and universal expressions, and unique feeling-motivational states. The great variety of emotional experiences is explained as a function of emotion-cognition interactions that result in affective-cognitive structures.

Arousal↗

Are emotions contagious? Evoked emotions while viewing emotionally expressive faces: quality, quantity, time course and gender differences.

In human interactions, frequently one individual becomes 'infected' with emotions displayed by his or her partner. We tested the predictions by Hatfield et al. (1992) (Primitive emotional contagion. Review of Personal and Social Psychology 14, 151-177) that the automatic, mostly unconscious component of this process, called 'primitive emotional contagion', is repeatable and fast, that stronger facial expressions of the sender evoke stronger emotions in the viewer and that women are more susceptible to emotional contagion than men. We presented photos from the Pictures of Facial Affect (Ekman and Friesen, 1976). (Pictures of Facial Affect. Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto) on a PC varying the affective content (happy and sad), the expressive strength and the duration of presentation. After each photo, subjects rated the strength of experienced happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise, fear and pleasure. Feelings of happiness or sadness were significantly, specifically and repeatedly evoked in the viewer - even with presentations lasting only 500 ms. Stronger expressions evoked more emotion. The gender of the viewer had weak effects. We hypothesize that this fast and repeatable reaction is likely to have a 'prewired' neural basis. We propose that the induction of emotional processes within a subject by the perception of emotionally expressive faces is a powerful instrument in the detection of emotional states in others and as the basis for one's own reactions. Detailed knowledge of emotional reactions to faces is also valuable as a basis for psychiatric studies of disorders in affect and/or communication and in studies using functional imaging (fMRI or PET) where faces are increasingly used as stimuli.

Adult↗

From emotion perception to emotion experience: emotions evoked by pictures and classical music.

Most previous neurophysiological studies evoked emotions by presenting visual stimuli. Models of the emotion circuits in the brain have for the most part ignored emotions arising from musical stimuli. To our knowledge, this is the first emotion brain study which examined the influence of visual and musical stimuli on brain processing. Highly arousing pictures of the International Affective Picture System and classical musical excerpts were chosen to evoke the three basic emotions of happiness, sadness and fear. The emotional stimuli modalities were presented for 70 s either alone or combined (congruent) in a counterbalanced and random order. Electroencephalogram (EEG) Alpha-Power-Density, which is inversely related to neural electrical activity, in 30 scalp electrodes from 24 right-handed healthy female subjects, was recorded. In addition, heart rate (HR), skin conductance responses (SCR), respiration, temperature and psychometrical ratings were collected. Results showed that the experienced quality of the presented emotions was most accurate in the combined conditions, intermediate in the picture conditions and lowest in the sound conditions. Furthermore, both the psychometrical ratings and the physiological involvement measurements (SCR, HR, Respiration) were significantly increased in the combined and sound conditions compared to the picture conditions. Finally, repeated measures ANOVA revealed the largest Alpha-Power-Density for the sound conditions, intermediate for the picture conditions, and lowest for the combined conditions, indicating the strongest activation in the combined conditions in a distributed emotion and arousal network comprising frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital neural structures. Summing up, these findings demonstrate that music can markedly enhance the emotional experience evoked by affective pictures.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

An emotion-focused approach to the overregulation of emotion and emotional pain.

The importance of facilitating productive therapeutic processes to gain access to overregulated primary adaptive emotional experience is discussed. In addition to describing common two- and three-step emotion sequences involved in change, this article presents the more complex sequences involved in facing emotional pain. Key aspects of facing pain are allowing the experience of "brokenness," or a "shattering" of the self, feeling the associated painful emotions, and processing them to completion. This promotes a transformation in view of self, world, and other. A case example and some general principles of emotional change are given.

Adult↗

Emotion regulation during social remembering: differences between emotions elicited during an event and emotions elicited when talking about it.

This paper examines emotion regulation as a function of autobiographical remembering in social contexts. Two studies (n = 38 and 123, respectively) are presented that provide evidence that autobiographical remembering in social settings can result in changes in the emotions associated with an experience. However, the results also suggest that whether changes occur depends on features of the recall context, including the gender of participants, and the responses of their listeners. Across both studies, men showed greater emotional benefits from talking about events than women. Moreover, greater listener agreement was associated with greater benefits for emotion. The results are discussed in terms of functions of autobiographical remembering, gender, social support, and emotion regulation.

Adolescent↗

Kindergarten-aged children's reactions to an emotionally charged naturalistic event: relations between cognitions, self-reported emotions, and emotional behaviour.

Relations between kindergarten-aged children's cognitions, self-reported emotions, and expressive behaviour regarding an emotion-eliciting event were examined by investigating 32 Dutch children's reactions to meeting "Sinterklaas", who they think brings presents for children, but who might also punish them. Measures included cognitions about Sinterklaas, emotion self-reports, and expressive behaviour when meeting Sinterklaas. Girls', but not boys', self-reports were related to their expressive behaviour. Boys' cognitions were not related to their emotions, whereas girls' cognitions and emotions were related inversely. That is, girls who reported the most positive cognitions about Sinterklaas showed the most, rather than the least, fear.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Cognitive--emotional distinctiveness: separating emotions from non-emotions in the representation of a stressful memory.

Current theories on autobiographical memory and recent neurological evidence suggest that emotional and non-emotional features of a memory may be retrieved by separate systems. To test this notion, 207 participants who had experienced the break-up of a significant romantic relationship in the last 12 months completed a Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) procedure in relation to the previous relationship. The resulting MDS model revealed two dimensions: a valence and an emotional/non-emotional dimension. Further, participants who associated a high level of distress with their relationship break-up perceived less dissimilarity between emotional and non-emotional features than participants who associated a low level of distress with their relationship break-up. Theoretical and methodological implications for stress and memory are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Children's memory for emotional events: the importance of emotion-related retrieval cues.

Preschool children's memory for real life emotion episodes was assessed by first having their parents generate descriptions of recent events where they had actually observed their children experience happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. The 77 preschool children, 42 boys and 33 girls, were then presented with their parents' recollection of each precipitating event and asked to recall everything they could remember about the emotion episode. Instructions for facilitating retrieval varied across four conditions. In the Control Condition, children were presented with a precipitating event and were asked to recall the entire episode, without being given any emotion cue. In the Emotion Label Condition, children were presented with a precipitating event, were asked to generate a verbal label(s) that corresponded to their emotional reaction to the event, and were asked to recall the entire episode. In the Emotion Face Condition, children generated a verbal label for their emotional reaction, made a face that corresponded to their emotional reaction, and were asked to recall the entire episode. In the Emotion Reinstatement Condition, children labeled their emotional reaction, made a face, and were then asked to reinstate their original emotional reaction as though it were happening in the present. Almost all children recognized and agreed that the precipitating events described by their parents had occurred. Across all emotions, children instructed to use all three emotion cues generated the most detailed, goal-directed, and causally structured accounts, and also recalled more additional experiences associated with each emotion episode. These results show that the quantity, content, and organization of memory for emotional events are affected significantly by reinstatement of the original emotional reaction.

Child↗

Frontal electroencephalographic correlates of individual differences in emotion expression in infants: a brain systems perspective on emotion.

Emotion expressions can be characterized by both the type of emotion displayed and the intensity with which the emotion is expressed. Individual differences in these two aspects of emotion appear to vary independently and may perhaps account for distinct dimensions of temperament, personality, and vulnerability to psychopathology. We reviewed several sets of data gathered in our laboratory that indicate that these two dimensions of emotion expression are associated with distinct and independent patterns of frontal EEG activity in infants. Specifically, whereas the type of emotion expression was found to be associated with asymmetries in frontal EEG activity, the intensity of emotion expression was found to be associated with generalized activation of both the right and the left frontal regions. Moreover, we reviewed and provided evidence that measures of asymmetrical frontal activity are better predictors of individual differences in the tendency to express certain emotions, such as distress and sadness, whereas measures of generalized frontal activity are better predictors of individual differences in emotional reactivity and emotion intensity. The neuroanatomical bases of emotion were discussed with special reference to the role of the frontal lobe in emotion regulation. It was hypothesized that the frontal activation asymmetries that have been found to accompany emotion expressions reflect specific regulation strategies. The left frontal region is specialized for regulation strategies involving action schemes that serve to maintain continuity and stability of the organism-environment relation and of ongoing motor schemes, such as those involved in language and the expression of happiness and interest. In contrast, the right frontal region appears to be specialized for regulation strategies that involve processing novel stimuli that disrupt ongoing activity, such as might occur during the expression of fear, disgust, and distress. Furthermore, it was proposed that individual differences in patterns of frontal EEG asymmetries during emotion may be related to socialization influences rather than solely innate factors. It was speculated that the pattern of generalized frontal lobe activation that accompanies the experience of intense emotions may reflect, in part, the relatively diffuse influence of subcortical structures on the cortex and may serve to increase the infant's general readiness to receive and respond to significant external stimuli.

Affect↗

The development of emotion-processing in children: effects of age, emotion, and intensity.

BACKGROUND: This study examined the effects of age and two novel factors (intensity and emotion category) on healthy children's developing emotion-processing from 4 to 15 years using two matching paradigms. METHODS: An explicit emotion-matching task was employed in which children matched the emotion of a target individual, and an implicit task whereby participants ignored the emotive facial stimulus and matched identity. Four intensities (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%) for each of five emotion categories (sad, anger, happy, fear, and disgust) were included and provided a novel avenue of emotion-processing exploration. RESULTS: Increasing age significantly improved children's performance on both tasks, particularly for fear and disgust. Age was not associated with more subtle processing (i.e., lower intensity of expression). When explicitly matching emotion expressions, increasing intensity was associated with improved performance. When matching identities (implicit emotion-matching), emotion category and intensity influenced task performance. Sex effects were minimal. CONCLUSIONS: In children, age, facial expression intensity and emotion category are important for predicting accuracy on emotion-processing tasks. Emotion category and expression intensity differentially affect performance on explicit and implicit emotion-processing tasks.

Adolescent↗

A rule-based emotion-dependent feature extraction method for emotion analysis from speech.

This paper presents a rule-based method to determine emotion-dependent features, which are defined from high-level features derived from the statistical measurements of prosodic parameters of speech. Emotion-dependent features are selected from high-level features using extraction rules. The ratio of emotional expression similarity between two speakers is defined by calculating the number and values of the emotion-dependent features that are present for the two speakers being compared. Emotional speech from Interface databases is used for evaluation of the proposed method, which was used to analyze emotional speech from five male and four female speakers in order to find any similarities and differences among individual speakers. The speakers are actors that have interpreted six emotions in four different languages. The results show that all the speakers share some universal signs regarding certain emotion-dependent features of emotional expression. Further analysis revealed that almost all speakers in the analysis used unique sets of emotion-dependent features and each speaker used unique values for the defined emotion-dependent features. The comparison among speakers shows that the expressed emotions can be analyzed according to two criteria. The first criterion is a defined set of emotion-dependent features and the second is an emotion-dependent feature value.

Adult↗

[Actuality of Wallon's emotional model: toward a "body-psychosocial" model of emotions].

Author focuses on qualitative approach of emotions with their human function. She postulates that emotions would be one of the way of the mind's body-inscription. A short presentation of the actual discussion, within psychoneurology and cognitive psychology, shows the lack of a developmental perspective. From the Wallon's emotions theory, the author presents a model that allows to go beyond this limit and to redefine the primary function of emotions: the "body-psycho-social Wallon's model" of emotions. Wallon's emotional model focuses on the interaction between body-image and psycho-social construction. This model: a) fixes the emotions into automatisms, but these automatisms are already in link with the social world (through the sense of the mother's language), b) establishes the integrative function of antagonisms (between mind and automatisms, between emotions and mind, between emotions and automatisms). This model shows that emotion's function cannot be reduce to the adaptative response to an unpredictable situation (cognitive or motor). The initial function of emotions concerns the communication system, or better, the first function of emotions is a search for action on family circle, by means of mimicry with ambient and emotional contagion. This emotional system is completely dependent (addicted) on the environment. It gives a "tool" to put in coordination with its environment: a) it favours the setting up of an instant empathy within infant and family circle, b) it makes easier the mind and motor accommodation, c) it put in the necessary plasticity for the emergence of the consciousness.

Affect↗

Attentional modulation of emotional stimulus processing: an fMRI study using emotional expectancy.

We used emotional expectancy to study attentional modulation in the processing of emotional stimuli. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), volunteers saw emotional and neutral expectancy cues signaling the subsequent presentation of corresponding emotional or neutral pictorial stimuli. As a control, emotional and neutral pictures were presented without preceding expectancy cue, resulting in a 2 x 2 factorial design with the factors "expectancy" and "emotion." Statistical analysis revealed a significant positive interaction effect between these factors in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC, Brodmann area [BA] 9/10), amygdala, and dorsal midbrain. In all these regions, expectancy augmented the neural response to emotional but not to neutral pictures. Time course analysis of raw data suggests that this augmented activation was not preceded by baseline increases in MPFC and amygdala during the period of emotional expectancy. In a post-scanning session, the paradigm was presented for a second time to allow emotional intensity rating. Again, a significant interaction between expectancy and emotion was observed, with intensity ratings specifically enhanced in emotional photographs preceded by expectancy. There was a positive correlation between intensity ratings and blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signals in the left amygdala. We conclude that specific components of the emotion network show enhanced activation in response to emotional stimuli when these are preceded by expectancy. This enhancement effect is not present in neutral pictures and might parallel accentuated subjective feeling states.

Adult↗

Cerebral hemispheric differences in memory of emotional and non-emotional words in normal individuals.

The present study was designed to examine the cerebral hemispheric differences in memory of positive, negative and non-emotional words using a new method of successive presentation to each visual half-field in which perception of each item was nearly perfect thereby allowing laterality differences for effects of emotion on memory to emerge unconfounded by perception (Experiment 1). This procedure was compared with traditional perceptual identification (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, 12 words were presented successively in each half field in each trial followed by free recall at the end of the trial. The results showed that recall of positive and negative emotional words was better than that of non-emotional words in both visual fields. Recall of positive and negative emotional words was not different in left and right visual fields (RVFs) although the recall of non-emotional words was better in the RVF than in the left visual field (LVF). The differences in recall between emotional and non-emotional words was greater in the LVF than in the RVF. Experiment 2 used the more traditional method of perceptual identification following each visual half-field presentation of a single item. Perceptual identification was better in the RVF than the LVF in each word condition. There were no visual field differences in perceptual identification between emotional and non-emotional words, as there was for memory in Experiment 1. The results supported the hypothesis that explicit memory for emotional words was dependent more on the right hemisphere, whereas perception of both emotional and non-emotional words was more dependent on the left hemisphere.

Adult↗